The Oktoberfest
A fresh nightmare tore me from my slumber early Monday morning. I had been playing the Song of Time on Prince Otto’s organ, and he had come bursting in with a bunch of guards, bellowing that I must be burned as a witch. Fear had consumed me, and I threw together some discordant notes in an attempt to open the gateway of time. But for some reason a portal to hell opened instead, and I heard Augustin chuckling somewhere in the background, his suave voice repeating a warning he had spoken not long ago: “Your curiosity may be the death of you . . . .”
When I awoke, I found myself peppered with flakes of ice, an instinctual attempt to shield me from hell’s flames. I drew a gasping breath, my eyes shifting toward Freia’s bed. She lay curled beneath her blanket in the flickering
